Year 1902
One morning in July, 1902, Mr. Charleston, a friend of David’s, told him that he had located in Hopkins, Minnesota, and advised him to go and try in South St. Paul, as it was only 18 miles distance from Minneapolis. He suggested that David start there from the bottom up and grow along with the community, as that town had a good future, being in the early stage of development as a meat-packing town.
“True,” Mr. Charleston said, “It is a sort of primitive frontier town, but like all industrial centers it has a chance to grow and you will grow along and make good like many others. Better try it. It’s only seven miles out of St. Paul on the Great Western Railroad. Try your luck, as you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Fascinating that David has an obviously Christian friend.
So David and Lena took the train [from Minneapolis] to South St. Paul to look the place over. Lena felt very disheartened. It happened to be just after a warm rain. An east wind was blowing, the streets were muddy, and there was an awful stench from the cattle pens. It was terrible, she thought.
South St. Paul was a real frontier town with hitching posts all along in front of the saloons and the few business places. Cattlemen and cowpunchers were mostly on horseback, and farm wagons were drawn up along the main street, which consisted of one block on Concord Street. Horses hitched along the curb were flicking their tails in hopeless warfare against the summer pestilence of flies. On the shady side of the street sat a few farmers swapping politics.
It was hardly possible to walk in the mire and the roadway in most places was two feet below the sidewalk level. The corner of Grand and Concord streets was the city’s hub. There was located the Grand Saloon.
What strikes me most about David’s description of South St. Paul is how vivid it is. He brings that time and place alive. To me, this reveals a couple of things about my great-grandfather. First, he really was a talented writer and a remarkably intelligent man. We can’t forget that he was writing in his third or fourth language (he arrived in the U.S. with little, if any, English), yet he furnishes his readers with clear, rich sensory images of early South St. Paul. If life circumstances had been different (if he had been formally educated, for starters), it’s quite possible that he could have become more than a self-published author. Second, David had an adventuresome spirit. His narrative gains momentum and becomes richer every time he writes about men venturing out into the “wild and woolly” unknown, whether it be Ben Zion’s homesteading fiasco, Berl the Zameter’s exotic international rug trade, or his own wild tales about South St. Paul.
A dingy packing plant with many windows and a tall chimney belching forth volumes of smoke darkened the air above and made filthy the earth beneath.
The unpaved street was almost impossible to cross from one side to the other. Great puddles emerged from under the clay holes so that communication was practically cut off. There were no real sidewalks, no sewer. Water was obtained mostly from pumps. Outhouses were located at the end of lots and there were stables in the backyards and odorous cesspools.
David and Lena observed the perplexing change in the atmosphere, the clouds curling along the Mississippi River, the stream in the distance, the sky pale as far as they could see, the sound of the animals. Into their disturbed consciousness sank the distant lowing of the animals, the noises of thousands of cattle and swine. Here and there through the alleys men were galloping on horseback, men booted and with long whips. They were calling to each other and driving cattle to the scales to be weighed. These men were mostly Western stock-raisers who came from Montana.
The educational facilities of South St. Paul consisted of an old red schoolhouse with its walls propped up with beams to prevent them from caving in. There was no sewer or gas in the town.
The emotional tone is confused here — what is he saying? They are attracted, or repulsed? A good example of his dreadful writing style... he tries to be an observer of nature, but the emotional point seems always to be lost.
I think David’s writing is pretty unbiased here, and presents us with an example of his poetic sensibility battling with his ubiquitous perception of corruption, whether moral or physical. He describes a scene that’s rustic to say the least, yet he takes it in stride and sees through the odorous cesspools to the beauty of the new American landscape.
David decided to open shop in August 1902. He began to do quite well and was able to support his family. The next spring David took his family to South St. Paul to make their permanent home there. Lena felt a little improved in health but was very much discouraged with such country life.
There was great excitement one morning early in March 1903 in the young packing town, when the clatter of horses’ hoofs was heard galloping up the street from the stockyards and there was a loud revolver report from the distance. All lined up in front of the Coat’s Saloon and as far as King’s Hotel anxious to learn the cause.
An irate prominent citizen in a fit of madness was determined to kill a merchant who had seduced his young daughter. It was the cool-headed policeman who prevented a double shooting, who stopped the irate father and went to arrest the merchant.
As the policeman entered the store the merchant felt that the jig was up. When the officer said, “In the name of the law I come to arrest you. Come with me to the station,” the merchant said, “Wait. I’ll take my topcoat.”
Finally, after six long-distance moves in less than twenty years’ time, David’s “quest for success” was rewarded. South St. Paul was a rustic town, with unpaved streets and stables in the backyards, but David was the only Jewish dry goods merchant in town, and he was able to earn enough from the store revenue to support his family.
Open shop” means: he rents his own dressmaking or tailoring store? Previously he has been working for someone else? Just a few months ago he was begging/peddling in snowdrifts in rural Michigan, suddenly he has his own store?
Is this a Jewish “irate citizen” who is referring to the South St. Paul residents as foreigners and he means Christians?
Going behind the partition the merchant shot himself with a revolver that he evidently had held for that purpose. He died instantly.
There was quite a commotion for a few days in town. The result was that one of the gang was sentenced to seven years in state prison. Three others skipped the state for the time at least. Shortly afterward the irate citizen met David on the street and in the course of the conversation said, “David, I am surprised at you. You are an intelligent man, but you settle down among those foreigners to build a home and to raise a family on Concord Street among those bigamists and philanderers. How do you expect to rear a decent family?”
David replied, “Sir, if you don’t eat garlic you’ll never smell. It is the mother’s duty to look after the children. The father is usually occupied all day in his work, earning a living and providing for his family, and most of his evenings are devoted to civic and political duties and meetings. Therefore it is the mother’s duty to care for the children. She is supposed to know where they are after school or at play. It is the mother’s fault when the children go wrong. It’s her watchful eye only that will lead them in the right path, preventing them from getting into mischief.”
Such a blunt answer, such ungloved truth displaced the irate citizen at the moment, but later he admitted that David was right.
Evenings devoted to civic and political duties — this from the guy who was just begging/peddling? He in 1920 is not able to make his memoir character, his self of 15 years previous, come alive in the right way.
Imagine life as Lena, according to David’s “ungloved truth.” The weight of her children’s successes and failures falls directly on her shoulders. I experience David’s Diary in two ways: discovering the story of his life and character, and of our family’s origins, on the one hand; and on the other, as a kind of family legend that traces the way back to this trait, on my mother’s side of the family, of cool judgment and stubborn adherence to convictions. I can’t help wondering what the effects are on a person (Lena) when it is her responsibility alone to make sure that her children are “on the right path.” Did that pressure from her husband affect the way she treated and raised her children? It must have done. Meanwhile, the men focus on their own, important professional and civic duties. According to David’s mode of reasoning, all the crooks and failures of the world are a product of their mother’s negligence. Do the psychological math.
Hopkins is now a suburb a few miles southeast of Minneapolis